SkyZED 'Flower Tower'

Location: Wandsworth Roundabout, West London
Client: None
Description: Carbon neutral skyscraper 35 storeys + with commercial and residential
Value: £60M
Notes:

SkyZED is a concept for a mixed-use, 'ZED tower' community, that generates its own energy on an urban plot. SkyZED incorporates most of the BedZED strategies, including building physics design, and use of renewable energy technologies. To optimise views, daylight and privacy for all flats, the plan has four petal-shaped floor plates, arranged like a flower. To minimise façade areas, the design has evolved into two bean-shaped blocks.
SkyZED has been designed to utilise reclaimed, low-cost building materials. Materials are predominantly slip-formed GGBS (Ground Granulated Blast Slag) concrete and reclaimed timber stressed-skin panels, with some new ply and glulam. Each tower petal contains a mixture of two-bed flats or three-bed maisonettes. All homes have good views and high daylight levels. Living rooms open out on to balconies on the leading edge of each petal, where wind velocities are slowest, and privacy is greatest. All windows have high-performance double glazing, and are set into walls with 300mm of insulation. Walls provide excellent thermal protection against both summer sun and winter heat-loss. They also provide acoustic isolation to reduce noise. Every four floors, the petals are linked, providing access to all four lifts and a communal lobby. Residents can then use any lift, all of which are within a short flight of stairs from their homes; or wait for the lift for their block. A double-glazed skylight above each lobby provides daylight, and a view of the rotating wind turbine. The roof of each linked access-floor is covered with lawn, and provides a skygarden for adjacent flats.

Conventional towers rob sunlight from their neighbours. The SkyZED tower is designed to sit within a 200m square urban block, where buildings and amenities are positioned to maximise sunlight, creating a solar urban village. The urban village incorporates 'ZEDquarter' (high or low density, low-rise buildings) and SkyZED (high density, high-rise buildings) models. Buildings are interspersed with sports facilities, which are often best positioned in the shade-zone of the tower, public parks, and community buildings such as schools and nurseries. The SkyZED tower has a 'living machine', which is a water treatment system, with the capacity to recycle grey and black water for an entire urban block. Pedestrian and cycle ramps lead to community facilities and a bar, generally on the sixth floor. The base of the tower provides workspace and commercial areas.

Modelling demonstrates that SkyZED, with its 'permeable' design, not only minimises the downdraughts which are typically associated with tall buildings, but also that its combination of wind and photovoltaic (PV) energy is very cost-effective. PV cells are mounted in the cladding and on roofs. Together, the PV and wind turbine meet SkyZED's annual electricity demand. This means that on most sites, a cheap woodchip fuelled boiler to heat homes, is all that is required. On larger sites, communal heating, such as biomass-fuelled Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant, can be an even more economical solution. The petal floor-plate arrangement magnifies ambient windspeed by about four times, making vertical-axis, 'drag' type wind turbines viable in urban areas. The ones we generally use are designed for oil rigs. Besides being robust, they have self-lubricating bearings, a 5-year maintenance cycle, and the blades turn almost silently.